Smeared Lipstick

I started writing this little blog and stopped. All the things one must learn before blogging gets fun, snazzy, tech savvy, and enjoyable to readers, are still far beyond me. My writing skills stink. I don't have time to learn at present. However, I promised a friend I would post something today, so here I am. Forgive my rudimentary scrawlings. I have much to share, really, and will eventually learn how to do it.

I am having a bit of a break from an extremely intensive few months of shows. It has been deliriously fun, but I am deeply exhausted. Time to recharge, do domestic damage control, and wipe off the smeared lipstick. Time to stop being my onstage self I call “the creature” and be the artsy peasant wife, the fix-it woman, what my sweet husband calls “Polly Gadget. I have been cooking all week, huge fabulous meals, gaining a bit of needed weight back that was carved away performing. Much Fall bounty has been prepared and put away for use when we are performing again, for when I am too busy to cook. Homemade sausage, stocks and sauces, baked goods, cheeses, root veggies. I started a indoor watercress garden. This past summer, I built an addition to my freezer, in order to store more in a customized way, Our little beach cottage demands I not waste space. I don't waste anything.

Cooking makes me happy. It is quiet, repetitive work, and sensual. Taking on the responsibility of nourishing self and those in my keep is something I have always considered important. I am good at it. I know what I am doing. It is NOT like my clueless blogging attempts. I know food. I am also a flirt, and cooking is flirting. Those bits of surprise tastes and texture, coming from me, my food, giving pleasure. Over and over, the process continues, changing with the seasons, to delight and seduce. I am a culinary flirt.

Here is my watercress garden. Just some suspended pots in a bus pan, with an aquarium aerator pump and bubble stones. Bubble, bubbling, like a babbling brook. The cress seemes to like it, and is happily rooting and growing. Hi, little cress!

And here is some winter squash, neglected but delicious, that grew among the boxwood and flowers in my tiny front yard herb garden. I had little time for gardening this year, and it is unkempt out there, but cute. These got along great without me, even if they are a bit battered. Kind of showing the veggie equivalant of my smeared lipstick, I think.

I guess I need to learn photography, too. Much to learn, and I will, I guess, slowly. I will take more pictures after I clean things up around here. The cottage's lipstick is smeared at the moment. As I said, I have been very, very busy. Sharing pictures and thoughts, doing the usual social stuff, these are the things I am awful at doing. Solitary work is much easier. Or putting on a show. I am told I am also unusually impressive at helping clients in their event plannings, too. That is, as long as I can avoid the dreaded business meeting, where I will be struggling to put the words together with all the other room noises, knowing my voice will go baby-sounding, and I will move oddly and too quickly, lose focus. I will become too loving and open, far more than I should in order to be taken as a producer of a world class band. I will need much rest afterwards to recover from the effort. One business meeting takes two days away from my other responsibilities.

In an ideal world, the challenges I face would be understood, without prejudice, and I could admit freely why I prefer not to have a business meeting. I could request a quieter place to meet, or give guidlines on ways to structure the meeting. One day, I decided I could do that. I explained politely, and, while people don't usually understand, most do try to accomodate. I am happy to show them how. I help them, they help me, making the world just a bit more ideal. People are grand. The ideal world is made by each of us, bit by bit.

I act for a living. I act like a singer. Like a bodacious blonde bombshell, vintage both in style and years. I create illusions from the raw materials of me. I take sequins and songs, and flirt around a room, sparkling in the spotlight. I am no different from that pumpkin in the picture above. I make a pie out of myself. A Chou Chou pie.

Is this objectification of my womanhood? Should I even worry? Far from it. I choose it, relish it, delight in it. I owe it. There is a time and place for the rituals of courtship in our society, just as in all cultures. When people dress up and gather, holding each other on the dance floor, I become a muse, a reflection of the guests emotions. They see me sway and they are reminded of the sway in themselves. They hear me purr a note out and they feel their own purr. It is not an ego driven exhibition, for I care nothing, nothing of that. I remind them that there is a time and place to feel yummy and flirt. To be pie. I don't have much to give socially, but I can give that.

When I was a little girl, and autistic child, I did not understand or care for how other children played together. I am still the same person, and find it hard to “hang out” in the usual way, though I have gained many skills along the way. I can do it, but never in that instictive, effortless way that is the pleasure of so many. So I perform, become a muse, to amuse. I am no great beauty, no great talent. I am a darn good flirt and make others want to flirt in an appropriate time and place. It is rehearsed. It is years of practiced experience. Just like cooking. I am pie.

The point is, I am autistic, and process differently. I socialize differently. Am I disabled? Hardly. Am I unable, that is, not able to join in social groups, even online, easily? Absolutely. Do I give all I can to make others happy, with pumpkin pie and Chou Chou pie? Completely. Here, have a slice of each! Enjoy!

One more thing in this meandering blather I am attempting to write. Doc, my love, my joy, my partner in all things, takes great delight in the little acts I do, the flirtings, the pies. Delights in those things, but that is not love. He loves me, the unspoken me, the soul I am that completes the soul he is. It does not matter if I am quiet or flirting, able or not, brilliant or hopelessly lost, or if my lipstick is smeared. He loves me.

So, that's my little, happy post today, my promise to a friend. I need to straighten up my home now. Then I may get extra pretty and flirt with Doc. So he can smear my lipstick. Hope you find some great pie today.

Photo of me with two charming sons of doctor who diagnosed me as a child. I had a major crush on their father. They are just as crushable, times two!

 

 

 

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